1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a method and apparatus for controlling a display of pre-recorded content on a touch screen via a timeline-based interface.
2. Description of the Related Art
The term ‘touch screen’ or ‘touch panel’ refers to a user interface device that detects a touch position where a user touches letters displayed on a screen or a specific position on the screen with an input means such as a fingertip and a touch pen without using a keyboard, and performs a specific operation using stored software responsive to the detected touch position information. For this user interface device, in most cases, a user's fingertip is used as the input means which may cause an inaccuracy due to the large area of user's fingertip.
As a solution to this problem, a hardware solution such as a stylus pen has been proposed. Disadvantageously, however, the user must purchase a stylus pen separately, which can be easily lost, and must use his or her both hands to handle the stylus pen.
In a portable terminal, a timeline slider is widely used as a means for content manipulation such as Play, Rewind, and Fast Forward for video.
Generally, the timeline slider includes a straight bar corresponding to the full range of content or the full range of manipulation parameters (e.g., sound, brightness, etc.), and a slider indicating the current content playback position. As such, the user can readily adjust the content playback position by shifting or sliding the slider position with his or her fingertip.
However, due to the fixed timeline's scale and the large user's fingertip, the user experiences many difficulties in manipulating the content at his or her desired high accuracy.
To solve the above problem, various touch screen control methods have been proposed, including a user gesture-based touch screen control method, a multi-scale timeline-based touch screen control method, and a navigation button-based touch screen control method. However, currently there is no proposed scheme to efficiently adjust the scale of the timeline in the timeline area which may enhance the accuracy.
Recently, technology for adjusting a multi-scale timeline bar depending on the directional user drag has been proposed. Disadvantageously, however, in this method, the user drag needs to get out of the timeline bar area for dynamic scaling, and also the full timeline may not be displayed in a predetermined area. In particular, due to the decreasing size of the touch screen and the increasing capacity of the content, the user may feel significant discomfort in manipulating the timeline bar with a fixed scale.
Therefore, there is a need for new interference technology that can accurately manipulate and adjust multimedia content with less effort.